A confident record for Lady Balers
The San Benito Lady Balers answered the expectations.
When the Hollister softball team took the field at PAL Stadium
last week in San Jose, it was perhaps any other game to them.
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A confident record for Lady Balers
The San Benito Lady Balers answered the expectations.
When the Hollister softball team took the field at PAL Stadium last week in San Jose, it was perhaps any other game to them.
The schedule said it was the Central Coast Section Division I semifinals. It said the top-seeded Lady Balers were up against the No. 5 Carlmont Scots. It said that it was a rematch of last year’s CCS final, and a game that pitted arguably the two best softball teams in the section over the last five years.
For San Benito, maybe it was all of that. With the No. 1 seed steadfast next to their team name, maybe it was even more. But the team took the field that day like it was any other game. Winning two straight section titles can sometimes provide that feeling of ease for a squad.
They marched out onto the field following Gilroy’s 6-0 semifinal win against Monta Vista laughing and joking; in other words, they were enjoying the moment.
Even during the game, stone-cold starting pitcher Marisa Ibarra never wavered. In the third inning of that game, Carlmont sparked a two-out rally by connecting on a pair of singles.
A wild pitch advanced the runners to second and third base, and with a two-run deficit staring her straight in the eye, Ibarra struck out Carlmont’s Caitlin Steele for the third out.
To be honest, I was hoping for an explosion of emotion by Ibarra, perhaps a Joba Chamberlain-like scream off the mound after striking out Steele. Instead, Ibarra, like the previous 157 times she had done this season after a strikeout, walked off the mound calmly, confidently.
San Benito carried a quiet confidence all year – a swagger, if you will. After the Lady Balers took their third straight CCS title last Saturday – an 8-3 victory over sixth-seed and Tri-County Athletic League rival Gilroy – Manager Scott Smith put it perfectly.
“I think this [championship] is probably one of the sweeter ones,” Smith told South Valley sports editor Josh Koehn. “This one, we were almost dealing with complacency, but I think I misconstrued that (earlier in the season) because it was a calmness.”
While this quote followed the CCS title game, San Benito’s calmness showed through for much of the season. But the previous time the Lady Balers played Gilroy was perhaps a perfect example of the calmness the team displayed.
It was May 1, and the Mustangs took a 2-1 lead to the bottom of the seventh inning. Gilroy hadn’t beaten San Benito since March 21 of 2006, but before that streak against their league rival could come to an end, San Benito – as calm as could be – had three more outs.
In the bottom of the seventh, Jessica Vest, a freshman, delivered the game-tying double, and JC Clayton, a junior, connected on the game-winning single.
San Benito 3, Gilroy 2.
The Lady Balers only lost four times this season – three of those losses coming at the ultra-elite Faster to First tournament in Huntington Beach at the beginning of the season.
Their fourth loss? A 3-2 tournament defeat to Notre Dame, but that game was played under international rules, where a base runner was at second base at the start of each additional inning. Otherwise, San Benito beat Notre Dame in their two remaining league contests.
In a season just shy of utter domination, San Benito became the first Division I team to win three straight CCS titles.
Many have earned two in a row. No one has won three.
After winning two straight CCS titles coming into this year, San Benito answered the expectations the only way they know how.
